Installing boost for visual studio

tunc — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:06:01 +0000

Boost is a collection of free libraries for c++, kind of a Swiss knife for the c++ geek.
Most of boost is actually header only and don’t need any installation. To use the small dark part of boost
you need to install them, well built them, here is how:

Short, Softcore Method:

Go to BoostPro Computing and download a web installer. Follow the installer instructions.
It needs a free registration, and it does not contain some libraries like Boost.Python

Long, Hardcore Method:

This is the programmers way., we will built the libraries ourselves.

1.We start by downloading Boost Source code from Sourceforge

2.Extract the zip file to a nice folder, for me it is c:\Program Files\Boost\

3.Build BJam

Bjam is a tool that will help us built BOOST, but we first have to built it:
-Open visual studio Comman Prompt ,
start->All Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2005->visual studio tools->visual studio command prompt
cd C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_39_0\tools\jam\src>
built.bat
This made the following C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_39_0\tools\jam\src\bin.ntx86\bjam.exe
Now copy bjam.exe to the root boost directory : C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_39_0\

4.Build Boost

from the visual studio command promt go to C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_39_0\
For a complete set of libraries use the following:
bjam –toolset=msvc-8.0 –build-type=complete
If you want a sub set here are your options:
bjam toolset=msvc-8.0 variant=debug threading=multi link=shared
bjam toolset=msvc-8.0 variant=release threading=multi link=static
Now this will take some time…

5.Enjoy

Your lib directory is C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_39_0\stage\lib
Yout include directory is C:\Program Files\boost\boost_1_39_0\include

For details of this process you can refer to Boost getting started web pages

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Installing boost for visual studio

Short, Softcore Method:

Long, Hardcore Method: